Top 250 Leonard Cohen Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “I found that things became a lot easier when I no longer expected to win. You abandon your masterpiece and sink into the real masterpiece.”

— Leonard Cohen

52. “I’ve seen the nations rise and fall. I’ve heard their stories, heard them all, but love’s the only engine of survival.”

— Leonard Cohen

53. “Deprivation is the mother of poetry.”

— Leonard Cohen

54. “No one masters the heart.”

— Leonard Cohen

55. “I’m neither left or right. I’m just staying home tonight, getting lost in that hopeless little screen.”

— Leonard Cohen

56. “The blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold and it’s overturned the order of the soul...”

— Leonard Cohen

57. “From bitter searching of the heart, quickened with passion and with pain we rise to play a greater part this is the faith from which we start.”

— Leonard Cohen

58. “Reality is one of the possibilities I cannot afford to ignore.”

— Leonard Cohen

59. “I want to be paid for my work, not work for my pay.”

— Leonard Cohen

60. “When it all comes down to dust I will kill you if I must, I will help you if I can. When it all comes down to dust I will help you if I must, I will kill you if I can.”

— Leonard Cohen

61. “If I knew where the good songs came from, I’d go there more often. It’s a mysterious condition. It’s much like the life of a Catholic nun. You’re married to a mystery.”

— Leonard Cohen

62. “You have to keep cracking yourself open or you become a parody of yourself.”

— Leonard Cohen

63. “And I’ll dance with you in Vienna, I’ll be wearing a river’s disguise. The hyacinth wild on my shoulder my mouth on the dew of your thighs. And I’ll bury my soul in a scrapbook, with the photographs there and the moss. And I’ll yield to the flood of your beauty, my cheap violin and my cross.”

— Leonard Cohen

64. “Everybody knows the dice are loaded.”

— Leonard Cohen

65. “Avoid the flourish. Do not be afraid to be weak. Do not be ashamed to be tired. You look good when you’re tired. You look like you could go on forever. Now come into my arms. You are the image of my beauty .”

— Leonard Cohen

66. “The troubles came and I saved what I could save. A thread of light, a particle, a wave.”

— Leonard Cohen

67. “Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove Dance me to the end of love...”

— Leonard Cohen

68. “It’s four in the morning, the end of december I’m writing you now just to see if you’re better.”

— Leonard Cohen

69. “Every heart to Love will come, but like a refugee.”

— Leonard Cohen

70. “Your servant here, he has been told to say it clear, to say it cold: It’s over, it ain’t going any further And now the wheels of heaven stop you feel the devil’s riding crop Get ready for the future: it is murder.”

— Leonard Cohen

71. “It’s you my love, you who are the stranger.”

— Leonard Cohen

72. “I don’t even hate books anymore.”

— Leonard Cohen

73. “I’m planning a catastrophe.”

— Leonard Cohen

74. “I smile when I’m angry, I cheat and I lie. I do what I have to do to get by. But I know what is wrong and I know what is right, and I’d die for the truth in my secret life .”

— Leonard Cohen

75. “There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say there isn’t.”

— Leonard Cohen

76. “I am not the one who loved, it’s love that chooses me. When hatred with it’s package comes, you forbid delivery.”

— Leonard Cohen

77. “I’ll be marching through the morning, Marching through the night, Moving ’cross the borders Of My Secret Life.”

— Leonard Cohen

78. “As the mist leaves no scar On the dark green hill So my body leaves no scar On you and never will.”

— Leonard Cohen

79. “I don’t really understand that process called reincarnation but if there is such a thing I’d like to come back as my daughter’s dog.”

— Leonard Cohen

80. “The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world.”

— Leonard Cohen

81. “It’s time that we began to laugh and cry and cry and laugh about it all again.”

— Leonard Cohen

82. “And I’ll bury my soul in a scrapbook, with the photographs there and the moths.”

— Leonard Cohen

83. “My friends are gone and my hair is grey. I ache in places I used to play. And I’m crazy for love but I’m not coming on. I’m just paying my rent every day in the tower of song.”

— Leonard Cohen

84. “Silence And a deeper silence When the crickets Hesitate.”

— Leonard Cohen

85. “I loved you for a long, long time I know this love is real It don’t matter how it all went wrong That don’t change the way I feel And I can’t believe that time’s Gonna heal this wound I’m speaking of There ain’t no cure for love.”

— Leonard Cohen

86. “I cannot understand why my arm is not a lilac tree.”

— Leonard Cohen

87. “The wars they will be fought again The holy dove be caught again bought and sold and bought again; the dove is never free.”

— Leonard Cohen

88. “I loved you when you opened like a lily to the heat; you see I’m just another snowman standing in the rain and sleet who loved you with his frozen love, his second hand physique, with all he is and all he was a thousand kisses deep.”

— Leonard Cohen

89. “To the men and women who own men and women those of us meant to be lovers we will not pardon you for wasting our bodies and time.”

— Leonard Cohen

90. “When you call me close to tell me your body is not beautiful I want to summon the eyes and hidden mouths of stone and light and water to testify against you.”

— Leonard Cohen

91. “The dreamers ride against the men of action. Oh see the men of action falling back.”

— Leonard Cohen

92. “Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.”

— Leonard Cohen

93. “Here is your cross, Your nails and your hill; And here is your love, That lists where it will.”

— Leonard Cohen

94. “I’m afraid to live any place but in expectation. I’m no life-risk.”

— Leonard Cohen

95. “Some say that no one ever leaves Montreal, for that city, like Canada itself, is designed to preserve the past, a past that happened somewhere else.”

— Leonard Cohen

96. “Growing old becomes clear to you at a certain point. I think it’s after the age of 70 you realize – you begin to actually be convinced – you’re growing older.”

— Leonard Cohen

97. “There are no letters in the mailbox And there are no grapes upon the vine And there are no chocolates in your boxes anymore And there are no diamonds in the mine.”

— Leonard Cohen

98. “Rust rust rust in the engines of love and time.”

— Leonard Cohen

99. “The Maestro says it’s Mozart but it sounds like bubble gum when you’re waiting for the miracle to come.”

— Leonard Cohen

100. “You say I took the name in vain I don’t even know the name But if I did, well really, what’s it to you? There’s a blaze of light in every word It doesn’t matter which you heard The holy or the broken Hallelujah.”

— Leonard Cohen